Distinguishability and chiral stability in solution: Effects of decoherence and intermolecular interactions

Abstract

We examine the effect of decoherence and intermolecular interactions (chiral discrimination energies) on the chiral stability and the distinguishability of initially pure versus mixed states in an open chiral system. Under a two-level approximation for a system, intermolecular interactions are introduced by a mean-field theory, and interaction between a system and an environment is modeled by a continuous measurement of a population difference between the two chiral states. The resultant equations are explored for various parameters, with emphasis on the combined effects of the initial condition of the system, the chiral discrimination energies, and the decoherence in determining: the distinguishability as measured by a population difference between the initially pure and mixed states, and the decoherence process; the chiral stability as measured by the purity decay; and the stationary state of the system at times long relative to the time scales of the system dynamics and of the environmental effects.

Chirality in molecular collision dynamics

“…Chiral influences and particularly intermolecular interactions have been considered for their role in the stabilization of pure chiral molecules, also in biological environments, in many recent theoretical works, see for example [14][15][16][17][18] and for an account of the quantum methods used, see [19].…”